


And the pain pays our dues

by lizwas



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: (john mulaney voice): I think jenny humphrey's a lesbian, Gen, eric & jenny mlm & wlw bffs, humphrey family dynamics, it's loving the Humphreys hours, jenny deserved better, mentions of canon-compliant trauma, some dair if you squint, this writer supports Jenny Humphrey rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 04:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29620608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizwas/pseuds/lizwas
Summary: Jenny gets her first tattoo at the age of eighteen, and it’s the beginning of a lifelong love affair.or,a character study of Jennifer Tallulah Humphrey told through ink.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	And the pain pays our dues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivermectin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/gifts).



> I had some notes about my girl Jennifer and my tattoo headcanons for her, then I read ivermectin's [blenny masterpiece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29372361), which inspired me to actually write this drabble. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> warning for mentions of canon-compliant sexual assault, suicide, depression, etc. It's very brief and vague, but take care of yourselves, loves.

Some people have one and  
Some have one that they're ashamed of  
Most people think that we're fools  
Some people don't get it and  
Some people don't care  
And some of us we have tattoos 

* * *

Jenny gets her first tattoo at the age of eighteen, and it’s the beginning of a lifelong love affair. Just after her birthday, Eric comes to visit her in Hudson, and they repair the ruins of their friendship once again, because even in the face of all Jenny’s mistakes (and now Eric’s made some of his own), they understand and love each other in a way that is inescapable. And honestly, that is precisely what they both need. 

They go to a parlor downtown that Jenny had heard about from Alex (AKA Neighbor Guy). She’s not too worried about getting in trouble, she’s legally an adult, after all. Plus, when it comes to ink, Jenny’s parents have no room to talk. 

She and Eric each get a semicolon. His is on the inside of his right wrist, a poignant reminder against the backdrop of his scars. Hers she gets on the side of her right index finger. Yeah, it hurts like hell, but isn’t that the point?

After, when they’re back in her room at her mom’s house, Eric raises his newly marked wrist in a toast, “To SSRIs!”

She laughs, and taps her bandaged finger to his wrist like she’s clinking a glass. 

After that first taste, Jenny can’t stop thinking about getting another. She brainstorms ideas, sketches out mock-ups, scrolls through tumblr, and daydreams of possibilities. 

She’s an artist herself, so she loves the symbolism of and technique behind tattooing, but there’s also that aspect of doing something taboo, that’s just on the edge of being wrong and dangerous that Jenny has always found so appealing. At least with this, the stakes are relatively low, and if a tattoo goes wrong, Jenny’s the only one who has to live with the mistake. 

After weeks of doodling and discarding ideas, Jenny decides on what to get next: a needle and thread, a small, simple bit of artwork on her left wrist. She likes the poeticness of it: the thing that is her life’s calling branded over her pulse point. It’s a reminder to herself, before she goes off and gets swept up into another big city: _this is the reason you’re here, don’t lose sight of that_. 

She goes back to the shop downtown the week before she flies to London, but this time she goes alone, standing on her own two feet. 

The next tattoos she gets when she is a second year at Central St. Martins. 

She had been itching to get some new ink for awhile now, but couldn’t land on a concept that felt right to her. But one day, when her group of friends decide to spend a Sunday morning at the Columbia Road Flower Market, inspiration strikes. 

On her right side, Jenny decides to get a bunch of hydrangeas, mostly because she just thinks they’re pretty, and she’s been on an aestheticism kick since her art history class last quarter, but she also gets them a little bit because they’re her mom’s favorite flower, and she’s feeling homesick. 

In the midst of this fit of nostalgia, Jenny also decides to get a swallow, just below the flowers, like the tattoos her dad got when she and her brother were born. It’s not as elaborate or colorful as Rufus’ (she decides to get it and the hydrangeas colored later, there’s only so much needle time a girl can take in one sitting), but she thinks it’s a nice homage. 

Jenny decided a long time ago that she and her dad love each other best from a distance, but she likes having this connection to him, a reminder of where she came from.

Jenny even toys with the idea of getting a third, in honor of her brother, to round out the set, but he is her roommate right now, so she doesn’t need anything to remember him by. His piles of books, hair product collection, and obsessive cleaning of the kitchen are reminder enough. 

She worries briefly about hiding her new ink immediately after she gets it (not before, because that would be too practical), but it occurs to her that wincing every time she stretches may be a giveaway. 

Dan does ask, his voice thick with brotherly concern when he catches her cringe after getting up off the couch. She knows he must be running through the catalog of her traumatic history, which is admittedly expansive: emcompassing everything from drug dealing to date rape to dairy-related acts of aggression. 

So rather than let his imagination—which is bigger than most—run wild, she just lifts up the hem of her t-shirt to show him, not bothering to hide it (she had grown out of lying to her brother at least 18 months ago anyway). 

She half-expects a lecture, or that underhanded condescension that Dan is so good at, but he just nods and says: “Make sure it doesn’t get infected.” (Perhaps her brother has grown out of some things, too).

He is so cool about it that Jenny starts to wonder if he has one. She asks him a few weeks later, and he tells her, embarrassed, “I’ve thought about it, made an appointment and everything, but then I chickened out when I saw the needle. Well, not even the actual needle, I just looked at one on Google images.”

Jenny cackles, then reaches over to muss his hair. “I knew I was the tough one.”

He swats her hand away, but says “No arguments here.”

Both the flowers and the bird remain uncolored until a year later, when watercolor overlays become all the rage. Jenny chooses to color them with the lesbian pride flag, in honor of herself, and a little bit for her girlfriend too. The girlfriend won’t last the year, but Jenny will be happy to still have the tattoos for years to come. 

The next tattoo doesn’t come until a few years later, when she’s out of college and working full-time like some kind of actual adult. She chooses to do a line art of an anatomical heart on the inside of her left arm, a few inches above her needle and thread. The coloring is much simpler than her lesbian flora and fauna (as she’s come to call them), inked only in black, plus gold to accent the outline. 

Maybe it’s cliche to get a tattoo based off a song lyric, and a Kesha one at that, but fuck it, Jenny has learned to do things that are meaningful for _her_. She doesn’t owe anyone else an explanation. 

Besides, she thinks “what’s left of my heart’s still made of gold” is an excellent visual art concept. 

Her next tattoo comes a couple years later, one she gets in honor of her wife. Jenny had wanted to get one of her name (Francesca, in a simple elegant script), but when she’d asked…

“Babe, I love you. I’ll love you forever, but you cannot get my name tattooed on your chest. I will laugh every single time I take your top off.”

So she settles for getting their wedding date instead, a _9-7-19_ over her heart. She also adds a small violin on her right wrist, so both her art and her wife’s have a place over a spot that shows her heartbeat.

She doesn’t expect her wife to get one in return—Frankie has a thing about needles just as bad as Dan does—but Jenny doesn’t mind, the ring on her finger is all the proof Jenny needs.

A few months after Jen gets married, she’s finally hit with inspiration for a tattoo in honor of her brother. 

At her wedding, Dan had gifted her a book of poetry (because of course he did). He had been a Smug Married for years now, so Jenny had braced herself for whatever sentimental and supposedly tasteful nonsense he and his-wife-slash-her-former-nemesis could have brought, but like every gift her big brother gave her, it was infuriatingly heartfelt and perfect.

On the inside cover, he had written a quote from the book for the inscription: 

> _For Jen, “two years younger, but three steps ahead,”_
> 
> “Oh Sister. No matter your wreckage.  
>  There will be someone to find you beautiful,  
>  despite the cruddy metal. Your ruin is not to be hidden  
>  behind paint and canvas. Let them see the cracks.  
>  Someone will come to sing into these empty spaces.”

She had called him back into her dressing room to whack him upside the head for ruining her makeup. 

So, on her shoulder, she gets a small sailboat on the waves, with the text beneath: _No matter your wreckage._ A reminder. A thank you. 

She hasn’t told Dan about this tattoo yet, because she knows that he’ll cry.

And yes, it is a tribute to her big brother, but more than that, it’s a tribute to herself. To the girl who went through absolute shit, who crashed and burned and shipwrecked. To the woman she is now, who yes, is still a bitch, and very often a mess, but who is also loved and loving and worthy of all of it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> The song quoted at the beginning and in the title is ["Tattoos"](https://youtu.be/LBCJHzW-C88) by Frank Turner. I quote him in a lot of fics, but to be fair the man is a poet and really captures the vibes of the Humphrey siblings.
> 
> The poem quoted at the end is ["Ghost Ship"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkwRHCD_-2A) by Sarah Kay. It's a love poem to a younger sibling, and when I re-listened to it recently I was like "this is Dan & Jenny" bc I am Like That. If it's your thing, I highly recommend going on a Sarah Kay youtube poetry binge, she is an absolute fave.


End file.
